Partnership with industry helps Unicamp consolidate its leadership in Latin America.

247 - For the second consecutive year, the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) has been elected as the most prestigious higher education institution in Latin America. Unicamp's recipe for success appears to be intensive research and the close relationship between scientific production and industry. The academic reputation ranking of the British magazine Times Higher Education (THE) reinforces Brazilian universities as the best evaluated in the region – occupying six places in the top 10. 

"Newer and with half the annual budget, Unicamp is ahead of the University of São Paulo (USP), especially due to its partnerships with industry for knowledge production. The magazine's evaluation uses 13 performance metrics, divided into four areas: teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international perspective." USP still performs better, but is quite close to that of Unicamp, in teaching and internationalization. 'Unicamp has always had this vocation and proximity to industry. We need to seek more of this alternative source of funding, especially in a time of financial crisis,' says the university's rector, Marcelo Knobel. 

Professor Mário Maróstica, coordinator of the Nutrition and Metabolism Laboratory at Unicamp, for example, develops a series of research projects on the properties of certain foods so that they can be better utilized by the industry. One of the patents developed was for an extract from the jaboticaba peel, following the discovery of properties that prevent obesity and prostate cancer. 'This close relationship with industry should be in the DNA of every university. Unicamp prioritizes and encourages this partnership with the private sector,' he says.

Read more here And check out the list of the 50 most prestigious universities in Latin America: